Speaker 2: 0:20

Thank you. Meet Evan Polin, the president of Polin Performance Group. A master in sales coaching with over two decades of experience, evan is not just a consultant. He's a force in sales, focusing on mindset, planning and skill development. He's also the co-author of Selling Professional Services, the Sandler Way. Joining him is Craig Andrews, partner and CEO of Beholder Agency. An expert in growth marketing With 20 years under his belt, craig blends marketing creativity with strategy to propel businesses forward, making Beholder Agency a leader in effective marketing solutions. Together, evan and Craig are here to share their wisdom on winning strategies, best practices and transformative insights that will fuel your growth. Get ready to revolutionize your sales and marketing approach right here on the Sales and Marketing Playbook Unleashed.

Speaker 1: 1:11

And welcome to the Sales and Marketing Playbook Unleashed. I'm Craig Andrews and my partner in crime, Evan Poland. How are you doing today, Evan?

Speaker 3: 1:18

I'm doing great. How are you doing, Craig?

Speaker 1: 1:20

I'm doing awesome, man. We're at the end of our Subway series. So if you were paying attention to the first one of the trade show series, you would understand what we're talking about, and I'm going to double down on the baseball analogy later. But what I want to do is remind people. If you haven't seen the first part of this trade show series, which is called let me remind you the name, in case you guys are going to our YouTube Strategic Approach to Pre-Trade Show Preparation, to Maximize your ROI is the first part of the Subway series.

Speaker 1: 1:50

The second one that you should visit is when you're actually at the show. We call that one the Trade Show Success, maximizing your presence on the floor and we had a lot of good tips, a lot of good ideas in terms of what you should do. So if you haven't had a chance to go back and review those, go back, visit smplaybookcom and look at all those different podcasts. And if you want to see Evan and I's beautiful face, by all means go to YouTube. You have the same thing there, but you just get to see a little bit more animation from me and Evan instead of just hearing our voice being animated. So, evan, I'm going to give some tips here in terms of five things that I should think should happen while you're on the floor to set us up for the post game. The post, the post show OK, and I want you to think of five or three to five or however many you want that they should be experiencing from a sales perspective on the floor, like a feeling that you know that you really killing it.

Speaker 3: 2:43

That's a lot of pressure, but I'll see what I can do.

Speaker 1: 2:45

All right, I got you so I'll give you time here. So one of the first things you should see is a lot. If you're really working the show from a pre-perspective at the show, you should absolutely see a lot of high booth traffic. If you've been putting out emails, you've been reaching out to your client base, you should see a lot of traffic if you're doing it well, engaged conversations. We talked before in the other episode about just standing in the booth looking at your phone.

Speaker 1: 3:10

That's not engagement, make sure you're having good, engaged conversations, qualified lead collected. Qualified lead being collected we all know, we've all been on the show. We know we got a really good person we need to follow up with back in the day. I don't know if people do it anymore, but Evan used to tell me to write on the back of the cards little notes, so I know that there's a really good one. So if that type of stuff is going on, from my perspective a positive brand awareness Sometimes people will say, oh, I've heard you guys, or we follow you guys. Ring ring, we win. Marketing did its job and finally, social media buzz. So think about it from this way If people are hashtagging you or marking you or taking pictures in front of your booth, you know that you've really got them engaged from a marketing perspective and you're really doing good in show. So, evan, from a sales perspective in show, how do you know if things are going well for you?

Speaker 3: 4:01

Sure, A couple of things if you know that things are going well for you. Well for you, Sure, A couple of things if you know that things are going well for you. One you've met a lot of people. You've had a lot of good conversations. Craig, just as you mentioned, you've got notes written on the back of cards. You've got notes put in your phone about each of those conversations.

Speaker 3: 4:20

Those conversations, if you're doing a good job, should be with prospects. They should be with people who you may be able to sell through potential distributors, but it shouldn't just be other exhibitors. You should have had really good conversations with people who could do business with you. You should also if you're doing this right, and this will kind of bleed into what you're doing post-show, If you're doing this right, and this will kind of bleed into what you're doing post-show for people you had really good conversations with you should have very specific action items. You should either have appointments booked while you're at the show. You should have time scheduled to follow up with folks, but you shouldn't just leave it to chance. These days, everybody has their calendar in their pocket. There is no reason why if you're having a good conversation with somebody, you can't say hey, geez, Craig, you don't have your phone on you, do you? Oh, yeah, you do, You've got a phone. We will both want to get out our calendars now and pick a time to talk, so we should be doing that while we're at the show. And pick a time to talk, so we should be doing that while we're at the show.

Speaker 3: 5:27

The other thing that you should be doing, if the show is multiple days, if there are multiple people from your company at the show, you should be comparing notes. There shouldn't be three people from our company all following up with the same person. Somebody shouldn't fall through the cracks because I thought Craig was following up, Craig thought I was following up, Craig thought I was following up and then nobody followed up. And then the other thing that we should be doing, you should be doing at show is you're going to find, if you're trying to call on high end decision makers, oftentimes those people aren't going to be at the show. So when you stop by the booth and you're talking to somebody who's not the main contact that you want to talk to, you should be getting the name of a specific person that you should be following up with and your follow-up shouldn't just be.

Speaker 3: 6:14

Oh well, I met somebody at your booth and now you're trying to fumble around to find who from the company you should be talking to. But you should know exactly how to do the follow-up. And as we talk about post-show, I'll talk a little bit about how to do the follow-up. And as we talk about post-show, I'll talk a little bit about how to do that follow-up. But if you haven't done those things, you just stop by XYZ booth, talk to a really nice marketing person there but have no idea who you're supposed to follow up with. You're only slightly ahead of. You know where you were before the trade show started.

Speaker 1: 6:43

That's right. That's right, and so one of the pieces I want you guys who are listening to understand this we're about ready to give you a gem right now, ready. And I know Evan knows the answer to this because he's told me on many occasions what is the biggest mistake that people make post trade show. Do you have an idea?

Speaker 3: 7:06

I know exactly what it is.

Speaker 1: 7:08

Go ahead, give it to him, evan, give it to him.

Speaker 3: 7:11

So, yeah, and I'm sure nobody in the audience, in our listening audience, has done this, but they just know of other people who have done this Absolutely Spent all that time, spent all that effort, all that money went to the trade show. Have a giant stack of business cards or a big Excel spreadsheet of people I should follow up with. But I just got really busy when I got back to the office and I had to put out fires and I had to do other things. And it's three, four weeks later and I had to put out fires and I had to do other things. And it's three, four weeks later and I still haven't gotten around to following up from that trade show. Guess what? You've created a bunch of cold calls for yourself, so they're not going to be warm on my tunes and that's going to be for most of you listening thousands, if not tens of thousands, of dollars that you've just flushed down the toilet yeah, at least from a sales perspective, by going to a trade show identifying opportunities and then not following up.

Speaker 1: 8:05

Biggest mistake, the biggest mistake that people make, and so a lot of times, even from the marketing perspective, we'll follow up and we'll say hey, how did the show go? Well, if you understand what Evan and I are putting down sales and marketing this is the time that we should be talking with each other. Without a shadow of a doubt, you're going to have received feedback about a whole lot of stuff from your show. How did they like the product? What didn't they like about the product? Where can you follow up All this? Data points that should be absolutely forefront. Everybody coming back from the show excited, refreshed, energized with stories. All of that stuff becomes marketable material to push out to our client base. It might involve a new campaign based on what you learned. So if you're not in a position to follow up appropriately and use more marketing and a sales perspective, you're flushing it down the toilet.

Speaker 3: 8:58

And I'll talk from a marketing perspective for a second. There's often a lot of times, a lot of your competitors at the trade show as well, so you can see what they're doing well, what they're not doing well. And when you get back, sales and marketing should be talking about what kind of messaging, what kind of campaign can we do around where we know the gaps are and what we do well that our competitor may not do well, and be able to capitalize on that market where you may not have real time research at other times of the year.

Speaker 1: 9:29

So we're going to jump now. You've heard it. You've heard all the reasons why at show what should have been happening. So now we're going to pivot into post-show. So, Evan, why don't you go ahead and start us off post-show? You come back from the show Everybody has memories of. We went to this dinner and da-da-da-da happened. But let's get down to the real deal. What are the first steps they should do from a sales perspective?

Speaker 3: 9:51

There's a couple of things that should be done from a sales perspective. One and I'll just remind you of something that we talked about in the pre-show setup you should have already carved out time in your calendar to do the post-show follow-up. So it shouldn't be oh my God, when am I going to have the time to do it? It should be oh, I've got these four 90-minute blocks in my calendar for a couple days after the show, and you should know when you're following up. You should have with the other people at the show, prioritize the follow-up. You should know who you're following up with first, second, third First should be those meetings that you scheduled while you were at the show, and you should know exactly when that follow-up is taking place. Next, based on what you learn about the different companies, about the different prospects, you should have a good sense of who should be in that first tier of follow-up, who should be in that second tier of follow-up, working along with marketing to identify, okay, who didn't, who was at the show but we didn't get a chance to meet, and maybe who's getting that generic email that we're just putting out of our email system or putting out of HubSpot to say that we were sorry that we missed him at the show. But we should be prioritizing. We should know who's following up with which people. We should also based on those notes that you took during the conversation. That follow-up should not be a generic follow-up. If you did a really good job taking notes, that should be very specific. Hey, craig, when you and I were talking at the show, you mentioned XYZ. We thought it would make sense to talk about 1, 2, 3. And it should be a very, very specific follow-up based on the conversation that you had at the show, specific follow-up based on the conversation that you had at the show. Yep, and then you also need to be providing feedback to the marketing team from a sales perspective. What did you feel worked? What didn't work as well, what needs to be tweaked, so that you know we are that much better set off.

Speaker 3: 11:52

Because guess what, if you don't have that huddle with sales and marketing, together with leadership, with the owner, nine months from now, eight months from now, when you go to strategize that next show for the next year, nobody's going to remember the details.

Speaker 3: 12:07

75% of it's going to be lost. But if you have that follow-up the week after, two weeks after, everything's going to be fresh and and you'll have a really good sense of one is this a show that we should be going back to? And two, if we're going back, what do we need to do to make it better? And then going back to the follow-up for a second. The other thing we should be doing and salespeople, your marketing folks, will love this you doing, and salespeople, your marketing folks, will love this when we're putting the opportunities into our CRM, you should be highlighting that you had the meeting and you met somebody at the trade show. You should be tagging it to the show so that again we can start to track the return on investment for the time and money that we spent to determine did any real opportunities come from it and did any of those opportunities turn into actual business based on what we were doing at the show?

Speaker 1: 13:05

Beautiful, beautiful stuff, beautiful stuff. So the thing to keep in mind here from a marketing perspective and Evan hit a lot of those points is also, don't forget, this is the type of show, depending on the size of it, which, generally, depending on the size of it, which, generally, depending on the investment, you're going to a relatively good show it could set up your year or two years even, depending on how many people you have there, because, from a marketing perspective, we have the sales funnel, right. So they might have to get recycled back to the start over and kind of have a conversation because they weren't ready at this point in time, but that does not mean that they need to get trashed or put into a bin, that you'll never talk to them again, because now, one of the things that you know, we're here pitching and giving you the details in the playbook. Each one of those people become LinkedIn contacts, right, so it becomes multiplying the number of people that you can reach out to and talk to Evan in one of the shows brought up about how to be able to download that list. But while you're at the show, just like you have your calendar, you also have your LinkedIn. So you go hey, let me just look you up real quick and connect right there. That'll give a good indication of how serious the conversation was, depending on their security settings on their LinkedIn. And so now, if you're in a position where you go, hey, evan, no-transcript inevitably be incredibly heavy at the back end of that relationship and it's important to make sure that, from a marketing perspective, that you're top of mind. So the thing to remember post show is how do I remain top of mind nine or ten months later? That's the key part to this, and a lot of times that can be in information hey, we just introduced this new tool that we have, this new hardware software, whatever it might be. It might be something in terms of updates in our business to engage with them, right. What's in it for them with our improvements? Very important. That's another way to keep the conversation going.

Speaker 1: 15:25

If there's another way to keep the conversation going, it's not always hard calls, but it could be something in terms of hey, and this might be something that might be a little too far-fetched, but we've done it. And this, this might be something that might be a little too far fetched, but we've done it. Send them out a targeted gifts, right. So don't let the gifts just stop. At the show they picked up Chotsky's. It might be something where you say, hey, here's a dinner If they're a good enough client and you know that you've qualified them, that they could be a really good elephant for you, for example which Evan will go through later at some point in the show if they're a really good elephant. That's another way to keep you top of mind.

Speaker 1: 16:02

And don't forget the basics and the tried and true. Send them a handwritten note. Yep, right, that's one of the things that's missing in today, with all of our technology advancements is something as simple as opening up a letter and going oh wow, wait, what did I meet this guy? I met this guy at the show. Yeah, so he might actually give you a thank you or she might give you a thank you note because of that gift things in those tiers of the earliest follow-ups to the latest have a bit of touch to it. That's going to help develop your marketing a little bit better, especially in one of the other episodes that's coming up or that we've already had, I'm sorry that they're talking about the process of introducing yourself from a sales perspective. So that's what I have kind of from a follow-up. Evan, do you have anything to add to that?

Speaker 3: 16:46

Yeah, just that it should be personalized. There's nothing more embarrassing than when you get that email from somebody saying hey, it was great Thanks for stopping by the booth, and you know for damn sure you never stopped by their booth. So make sure it's customized, make sure it's personalized.

Speaker 1: 17:09

That's going to go a long way because, quite frankly, less and less people are doing it these days. That's right, and I would also add to the mix um, how are you calculating your roi, right? So do you have tips in terms of you come from the show, how would you calculate it? And actual number value? That's also helpful from our perspective yep.

Speaker 3: 17:24

So, from a sales perspective, what we're looking at is one how many new opportunities did we add to the sales funnel based on the people that we met, the conversations that we had, how many of those closed into business? If part of what you're doing is looking to meet partners, how many partners did we meet? How many referrals came from those partnerships that we may not have gotten if we weren't at that show, and what did that lead to in overall revenue? So we want to look at the conversations that we had. How many of those led to opportunities and then trying to, as best you can, track how much revenue those opportunities led to. And, as you're doing the math, those opportunities led to.

Speaker 3: 18:09

And, as you're doing the math, think about what your client looks like. Is it a one-time sale? Is it an ongoing thing where, once you have a client, you may keep them for years and years and years? So if that's the case, for some of my clients, one new opportunity, two new opportunities, could pay for five years worth of shows because of the value of the opportunity. So I'm not looking at volume in terms of number of opportunities, I'm looking at dollars and cents. What business came in? Because I was there, craig? From a marketing perspective, what are you looking at in terms of ROI?

Speaker 1: 18:50

In terms of ROI, I'm looking for engagement. Ultimately I'm looking for engagement and how we can absolutely use this for a long-term use, and a lot of times we can translate that engagement through social media. We can translate from followers' perspective, from how they're responding, from the followers, the number of people that we're adding to our connection base. That will also be a good ROI. And then when you combine that with the number of connections to the number of people who actually become clients, ultimately what you have is good referral sources right, because a lot of times if they become clients, you found them, they become clients and they start to refer you to other people. That means that your marketing message is getting through and there's something that you're doing. That's right. And it might be the salesperson who's doing this right, which is why sales and marketing have to speak, because that salesperson might have gold compared to somebody else. They might have actually invested more time and, if everything's going well, they've used the marketing tools.

Speaker 1: 19:50

This is another piece. If you've used marketing tools at the show, you don't use totally different stuff in the follow-up, because that's what they remember. So it's imperative that the marketing materials is congruent all the way through the follow-up so that way, when they're trying to jog their memory, remember they got probably a bag full of chachis, a bag full of information or information on their phones. That's totally overwhelming. But how do you stand out through all that paperwork? How do you stand out through all that stuff?

Speaker 1: 20:18

And it's usually through your marketing and the engagement that they had with the salesperson live at the show. So part of your messaging and reminding them in terms of ROI is this is how you felt when you were there with me, and if they can start to repeat back to you some of the stuff that you spoke about, that's a heck of an investment return on your investment because you know that your marketing has worked right. So, ultimately, those are the type of things that we want you guys to understand and recognize. And if you have any questions, by all means, evan, how can they, how can they reach you?

Speaker 3: 20:47

So best way you can, either, when this is posted on LinkedIn, comment on the LinkedIn. If you want to reach me personally, you can reach out to me, you can send me an email at evan at pollingpg pg stands for performancegroupcom and Craig, how can they find you?

Speaker 1: 21:13

Same way through LinkedIn or my email directly is cra Craig, c-r-a-i-g at BeholderAgencycom. And so, ultimately, guys, as we always ask for, like comment subscribe At minimum subscribe, we're giving some nuggets here, we're giving some gold nuggets out, evan, and so I'm going to end this with an analogy that we talked about in the beginning of this trade show series. Basically, if you think about the bottom of the ninth, in any baseball game, it's tied 1-1. We are the pitcher and you're the batter. We're the ones delivering the information to deliver all the end tools to allow you to be the batter and knock it out of the park.

Speaker 3: 21:59

And don't leave those runners stranded on base, don't leave those runners stranded on base.

Speaker 1: 22:03

Don't try and bunt, don't try and cheat and bunt. Knock it out of the park and be the winner on your team. That's what we're about here. We're developing winners in the marketing and sales space, and so, as we finish this out, we're going to come at you guys with a new series. We haven't discovered what it's going to be yet, but we're going to give you another series of sales and marketing working together, and so stay tuned. Like subscribe, subscribe and follow. If you have a comment, leave it. You can follow us on any of the Amazon podcasts, apple podcasts and more, or you can visit us on YouTube through our SM playbook SM playbook unleash dot com. Excuse me, we got a lot of different acronyms. Any closing points? Evan?

Speaker 3: 22:45

So we have given you the playbook. It's now up to you to put it into use.

Speaker 1: 22:51

Keep winning and we'll talk to you guys next time. Bye-bye.

Speaker 2: 22:58

Thank you for joining us on this exhilarating journey through the world of sales and marketing. Remember, the playbook is in your hands and the possibilities are limitless. Keep exploring, experimenting and innovating, and watch as your business reaches unprecedented levels of success. Don't forget to subscribe to the Sales and Marketing Playbook Unleashed on all major podcast platforms and follow us on YouTube, facebook and LinkedIn for even more exclusive content. Until next time, keep hustling and keep winning.